July 10, 2007

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Jul 10, 2007

We did go home so that I could talk to Doug, but as soon as we pulled up to his place, we saw him standing outside. He was wearing a wrinkled T-shirt and faded jeans, and he had that look he got on his face after he'd been crying. I hated to think that Sheila had upset him — and I had a strong guilty twinge thinking of what he'd said on the phone.

I think you already know…

As soon as I pulled up to the curb, he opened the door.

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"Forget about coming in for now," he said, getting in the backseat. "I'll come with you guys."

He caught my eye in the rearview mirror, and I realized that Sheila must be inside — that she must have come over to try and talk to him, or to convince him to give her another chance, and was refusing to leave.

I nodded my head, so he knew that I would know what was going on, and then I pulled away as Doug leaned forward and tapped Jackson on the shoulder.

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"Hey, guy," he said, putting on his best face. "How does sitting in the press box for this baseball game sound to you? Tons of free food, free drinks. And after the game, we can head down to the locker room. Not a bad remedy for the first week of summer school, huh?"

"It sounds great!" Jackson said, looking at me and lighting up.

"To me too," I said.

After that, I let Doug and Jackson talk to each other for the rest of the car ride.

Doug and I didn't talk about anything that was happening until after we got to the stadium, the game had started, and we had Jackson all set in the front row of the press box with two hot dogs, a bag of popcorn, and a large soda.

Then we went to the patio reserved for the press, and Doug slowly laid out the whole story.

It turns out that it was a little more complicated than I had thought. Sheila had been pregnant when she first told Doug she was — she hadn't been lying. But when she found out only a few days later that she had miscarried, she decided to leave out that slightly relevant piece of information — and had been trying to get pregnant in order to avoid telling Doug the truth. Even though you are supposed to wait after a miscarriage, even though she was drinking the entire time.

"It turns out," Doug said, "that she thinks maybe I can get over all of this. That none of this is unforgivable."

I shook my head in disbelief. She was beyond terrible. Beyond, and if she had been standing in front of me, right at that moment, I would have drop-kicked her. I was that disgusted.

"How did you find out?" I asked.

"I was using the home computer to send an e-mail from my work account, and by mistake I clicked on her e-mail account instead of mine. She must have left it open, or I went to the wrong Web browser, or something. I guess that part doesn't matter….though Sheila accused you of leaving the Web browser open, in case you were wondering. She told me you knew everything, that I should be equally mad at you."

"I didn't know everything…I just suspected," I said.

"Well…I know everything. I saw a very long back-and-forth e-mail exchange in there between Sheila and a fertility specialist. Apparently, her uterus has some inconsistencies that will make it difficult to carry any pregnancy to term. He recommends that she consider other options."

"Doug…"

He shook his head. "So I printed out the e-mail and confronted her when she got home, and she copped to everything. She said she was just so scared to lose me that she got a little desperate."

"You're not going to forgive her, though, are you? I mean, if you hadn't found the em-mail, you still wouldn't know."

"I know that. And I don't forgive her. But Liz, that brings me to the other point." He got a hurt and angry look in his eyes. "Which is how could you have known and not told me?"

"I didn't know for sure. I had suspicions, but I didn't know and I wasn't sure what to do. Like that night when you came home, and the wine had spilled everywhere. I almost told you then, but Sheila seemed so good at lying to you that it just didn't seem like the moment."

Doug shook his head. "That's not good enough. Not between me and you."

"I know that. I'm sorry." I paused. "And so what are you going to do?"

"Something I've wanted to do for a long time now," he said, the anger leaving his eyes. "If you'll still let me."